Skywatch Friday: The calm before Earl...

Thursday morning I went outside just after sunrise, when the sky was simply heat-haze coloured as opposed to blue, to take a walk around the gardens and record what they look like while we wait to see if Hurricane Earl comes a-calling. It seemed like a good idea to have a look at the mass of bloom still happening in my garden, when things are relatively tidy and floriferous and there wasn't a breath of wind to disturb the scene. So although it's not really sky-oriented, this is my offering for this week's Skywatch Friday.

A variety of hydrangeas provide a backdrop for this wash of perennials, evergreen and deciduous shrubs. I refer to this as my mini-prairie-in-progress, with panic grass, rudbeckias, and other coneflowers consorting with bee-enticing plants such as agastaches and eryngiums. The bees were extremely busy this morning, loving the heat, and perhaps knowing that there is inclement weather coming. They bustle around the garden, diving into flowers and essentially ignoring me. I listen to them and smile a lot.

My coneflowers are still going very strong in their bed. I mentioned on Facebook that Longsuffering Spouse kindly edged around this bed on the weekend, cutting out a good foot of sod and then adding well-composted manure to the bare ground. In a few weeks time, it'll be perfectly suited for tucking in some springflowering bulbs, and next spring I'll spread the perennials out, moving some of the coneflowers forward and letting the taller ones work as a backdrop.

The outburst of gold in the centre foreground is Solidago 'Little Lemon', a cultivated goldenrod sent to me last year by Dugald Cameron of GardenImport. It's thriving beautifully, and is becoming one of my favourite later-season flowers. I plan to divide the plant and move it to another bed where it can spread out and consort with eupatorium and other later-season stars.

Signs of the closing down of summer: some of the miscanthus are beginning to put up their tall, wispily elegant flower heads over their fountaining foliage, while Actaea 'Pink Spike' is in full bloom. Tanacetum 'Isla Gold' is blooming enthusiastically, although I plant it more for its gold foliage, which is starting to fade to a bright lime green now, and Monarda 'Raspberry Wine' is still providing lots of food for the lingering hummingbirds. It'll be interesting to see if they stay beyond tomorrow or if they take off on their migration before the arrival of Earl.

We're not terribly concerned about Earl, whether he arrives as a hurricane or a tropical storm. Living in a rural community on the shores of the Bay of Fundy means that we expect bombastic weather from time to time, and we are generally prepared for it. Those of you who are regular readers know that we get truly rude winter storms, and usually at least one tropical storm or diminishing hurricane as summer winds down. So things may be messy on Saturday, and there may be some flattened flowers and defoliated shrubs come Sunday, but I'd sooner that we took the brunt of it than the apple and pear producers down in the Valley below us. It could be a difficult weekend for them.

Skywatch Friday: Cape Split at High Water

For this week's Skywatch Friday, we're returning to the waters of the upper Bay of Fundy, for another trip around Cape Split. The Split has a popular hiking trail that snakes its way over 6+ kilometres of woodland paths, across the end of the North Mountain and out to the collection of sea stacks that give the trail its name.

Last Saturday it was really, really hot, and also very calm. Hubby suggested we go fishing, but the flounders weren't co-operating, so we went for a jaunt out around the Split instead.

That grassy and wooded area on the right? That's the Cape Split trail's terminus, on a cliff that is over 400 feet high. You can't go out on the other stacks unless you can fly, so we leave that to cormorants, gulls, and Search and Rescue helicopters. Personally, I prefer the boat because there's no traffic, no garbage from careless hikers, and there's this awesome view the whole time.

Beyond those first couple of stacks are a succession of lower, but still very impressive, piles of columnar basalt. There's quite a tide races through there twice a day, as the tides turn, but at or near high water, there's more than enough water for a motorized boat run by an experienced operator to go 'thru the Split.'

Longsuffering spouse is a retired lobster fisherman who worked in these waters for more than 25 years, so he knows what he's doing. This is the first time I've been out around the Split in several years, though and the thrill is just the same as it was the first time I went.

It's really hard to see what is going on here, but bear in mind: this is not a river, but the Minas channel, part of the Bay of Fundy with its world's highest tides. The riptide runs at around 8 knots when it's racing around the end of the Split, and it does some weird things: waves, whirlpools, 'dancing water', like rapids on the ocean. Not for the inexperienced boater.


LSS said to me, "the boat is likely going to move sideways here in a second," and just like that, she did indeed skitter sideways like a spooked horse. No problem, of course, with a good motor and a sensible helmsman. I just braced and kept taking photos. Hard to keep a level horizon when you're on the water, though.

Out well beyond, the water looks deceptively calm, and IS calm elsewhere in the Bay. But it boils and mutters and holds its secrets to itself here. Where we went through the hole is on the left: There's the very high cliff, then a medium sized stack, then three smaller ones, this big one on the right foreground, then the little rocks where the cormorants hang out drying their wings.

It's one of the most amazing, majestic, and mysterious places in Canada, if not the world. We're so lucky to live here, and to be able to go out on the water and admire this beauty for ourselves. Or we think so, anyway.

Skywatch Friday meets Memory Lane: The Skies of Labrador

It's no secret that I'm a little bit in love with the sea. I was born near it, raised my whole life beside it (except for one eighteen month stint in Ontario as a teenager). I live beside it now. I watch it, sail on it in lobster boats and coast guard vessels, occasionally swim in it. There is sea in my blood, though my father was a jet pilot. 

Two years ago, in the summer of 2007, I had the chance to go with fourteen other plant-crazy botanists and horticulturists to northwestern Newfoundland and south-eastern Labrador, to Battle Harbour in the  Battle Island. A dear friend who is a senior horticulturist and amazing plantsman led an annual trip plant-hunting for interesting variants of hardy native plants. Finally, things worked out so I could go on this epic adventure. 

The photos I posted on Wordless Wednesday were taken in Labrador on that trip. We travelled well over 3000 kilometres (about 2200 miles) over the span of nine days. To give you some idea of how far we were from home, and how big Newfoundland and Labrador are in comparison to other provincecs and states, just click on the map above. I've marked our journey from the Valley to Battle Harbour in green. Newfoundland could eat Nova Scotia and PEI for lunch. Nfld and Labrador are a very big province, bigger than most states. 

Here's a more relative explanation of the trip we took. To get to the wilds of Labrador from my home in the Valley, we had to leave Canning, then go to Falmouth to pick up a friend; drive to North Sydney and take a ferry six hours across the Cabot Straight to Porte aux Basques. Then we made our way gradually up through Gros Morne National Park, the most stunningly rugged and gorgeous wild space I've yet encountered. At the top of the Northern Peninsula, we took another ferry across the Strait of Belle Isle to Blanc Sablon Quebec, from which you could sneeze into Labrador. 

The next leg upon disembarking from MV Apollo was to make all possible haste to Red Bay, where we said goodbye to pavement and drove over gravel roads for 86 kilometres. Along the way, three Highways plow sheds. That's it, folks, til we hit a small community called Mary's Harbour, from which we were to take our last ferry, out to Battle Island. 

Have I mentioned that there was nothing there but rock, tundra, scrub trees, water, and sky? It was starkly beautiful. Emphasis on the 'stark.' 

I don't seem to have a photo of the boat we took from Mary's Harbour to Battle Harbour, but she was a lovely refitted fishing vessel, and I knew who had built her (she'd come from Nova Scotia). The captain and I shot the breeze about fibreglass boatbuilders, 2:1 reduction gears, the benefits of Cummings over Detroits over John Deere diesels, and other worthy talks. It comes in handy to be hitched to a (now retired) lobster fisherman. I talk boat fairly well, so long as it's a Cape Island type fishing vessel. 

Finally, (I think the trip was about 65 minutes), we navigated in among the shoals protecting Battle Harbour from the elements. This remote national historic site was once a crucially important fishing station, with its own Marconi wireless station. 

Once we were squared away in the residences where we'd be sleeping, we were off up the stony cliffs behind the settlement to look at plants, and collect seedlings, and photograph more plants. And gaze at the scenery and the peacefulness around us. 

One of Battle Harbour's claims to fame is that in 1909, Robert Peary arrived to cable back to New York that he'd successfully been to the North Pole. Imagine, a press conference from this fishing station off the coast of Labrador, hanging off the coast of Canada, talking to scientists in New York! It turned out Peary hadn't been the first to reach the Pole, but it was still an accomplishment nevertheless. 

We spent two nights here, and the second day had to delay our leaving because we had a bit of a storm come through. That worked out fine as a day to sort of rest, tell stories, sleep, eat awesome meals at the cookhouse, drink a little wine, tell more stories, and sleep some more. Of course, we had more weather when we got back to mainland Labrador, as you saw in Wednesday's photos. 

It's hard for anyone who has never been to someplace remote to grasp both the remoteness and the beauty. I could go back there again for a few days, armed with just my computer, camera and my eyes. We all spent a great deal of time looking, from peering at plant seedheads to examining lichens to gazing at the countless shades of blue in both sky and water. Some great friendships were made on that trip, and others strengthened, and we all learned a great deal. 

If you get the chance and are at all adventurous...GO. First, to any part of Newfoundland island, then particularly to Gros Morne and the Tablelands, then up to the Labrador, even just to do the scenic loop from Forteau to Red Bay. But if you're really adventurous, off to Battle Harbour you must go. You'll be treated magnificently by the staff of the site, left to your own resources, and...it's a good place to think. 

By the time I finish this post, I'm ready to pack up and move BACK to Newfoundland, where I was born (on the eastern side at St. John's.) Funny how my three favourite places to live would be St. John's, Montreal, and where I am right now, on a windy hill overlooking the Bay of Fundy. 

Guess I'm where I'm meant to be. Are you? That's my post for this Skywatch Friday.